Epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis and its relation to other forms of meningitis : A report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts.

  • Massachusetts. Department of Public Health.
Date:
1898
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis and its relation to other forms of meningitis : A report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    moved from a house and another family moved into it. In this family there were several cases. He thinks that the epidemic in 1887 was a continuation of the one in 1879, there being sporadic cases between the two epidemics. In the epidemic in Beuthen, reported by Richter/^^ there were fifty-six cases and twenty-four deaths. Seventeen of the cases came from tap rooms, and he thinks that in such localities there may be foci of infection. Richter^^ thinks that the disease may be contagious. He often found cases in the same family, and the disease spread most in places where people congregated. He gives one case which speaks strongly for contagion. A woman visited at a house where two children had been sick with the disease ; she stayed in the house one day, and then visited an uncle. She had meningitis on the fourth day. In the last days of her disease, on November 6, she was visited by a young man; on the 10th he had a light case ; after five days he returned to his business, and on the 19th an apprentice in the same shop was affected. The period of incubation he thought was about five days. In a question of the probability of transmission of an in- fectious disease we should consider the location of the disease and the ways in which the organism causing it can pass from the lesions of the disease to the outside ; further, the viability of the organisms and their possibility of leading a saprophytic existence. The lesions of meningitis are chiefly in the meninges of the brain and cord, and confined to these organs in most cases. While located in the meninges, there is little or no opportunity for the organism to infect the outside. In a certain number of cases there are lesions in the lungs, ears and nose, in which large numbers of organisms are present, and from which an infection of neighboring objects or persons could easily take place. The organism, as far as we have been able to tell from its behavior in culture media and in the tissues, has a feeble vitality, and would not be capable of leading a sapro- phytic existence. In the report on the bacteriology of the dis- ease will be found some observations bearing on the vitality of the organism producing it, when subjected in pure culture to